Twelve Gore Mad In Patterdale...

What is it with weather? Set up an OUTDOORSmagic / Gore test day in the Lakes, in October and you'd think you could rely on Michael Fish to conjure up the odd deluge wouldn't you? So how come I ended up eating breakfast outside in the sunshine on Sunday morning in Glenridding, eh?

It all began in the car park of the Patterdale YHA with Bill Morrison from our site sponsors, Gore, generously distributing test wear ranging from the new Paclite 3, through Windstopper fleece to N2S among the dozen-odd OM members who made it up for the meet. Bess, the Cotswold Keswick dog was there too, but despite a lot of pathetic begging, nowt fitted her. Sorry Bess, it's a dog's life. Nice hat though...

Then with everyone fully wind-proofed it was off an up into the hills. Thanks to OM regular and Lakes conoisseur Andy Wallace, we traced an eccentric route up a wide and green Grisedale, below St Sunday Crag, but instead of the predictable slog up past Grisedale tarn, we swung right and followed a direct line up the hillside towards Dollywagon Pike.

At first grassy and steep, Andy's route finished with a neat, rocky arete culminating on the summit. Nothing technical, nothing scrambly, but Andy swore that in fine weather the thing has real presence.

By now though, clouds were looming on Helvellyn, visibility was closing in and the odd spit of rain spattered our faces. Fantastic, ideal windproof testing conditions. From the summit of Dollywagon Pike, we swung round and onto the well-used path leading towards Helvellyn's summit past Nethermost Pike.

Predictably the summit shelter was doing its usual approximation of Picadilly Circus in the rush hour - a bit of a contrast after the peaceful loneliness of our approach - so we sat, ate then ran away down Swirral Edge.

Swirral's the second part of the famous Striding Edge horseshoe walk though nothing like as long there are a couple of mildy awkward steps, or at least there are when coated with slimey mud, the steps that is, not the walkers. Visibility was still down, but at least out of the wind, things felt warmer and altogether less serious.

Predictably as we dropped down out of the cloud, the day opened up again into a cascade of warm sunshine and we picked our way, disjointedly, down to Glenridding, and, hey, is that a pub?

Thanks to Gore for stumping up for an entire round for tired and happy purring OM members. Along the way we'd all had a chance to chat with Bill and Willie from Gore. Bill's a clothing expert, Willie's the UK footwear specialist and both of them keen walkers into the bargain. Both good company on the hill and knowledgeable to boot.

How good was the test gear? You'll find some impressions on the forum thread below and if you were there, feel free to add your own take on what you used. Generally people seemed pretty impressed with the combination of windproofing and breathability offered by the Windstopper stuff in particular, though it wasn't really wet enough to put the Paclite properly through the test grinder.

In a small way, the OM editor was also massively happy with a Windstopper beanie hat... Not too hot, but still windproof and simple, somehow it found its way into the editorial pack at the end of the day.

And the rest? A blurry Saturday night in the White Lion in Patterdale where Bill's Scottish charm somehow secured us a table for ten in a jam-packed pub and the food took days to arrive, followed by a near-perfect, summer-like Saturday with people choosing their own routes mainly on the High Street side of the valley. All in all, a right grand weekend.

Thanks

We'd just like to say thanks to everyone who came along and, of course to Bill and Willie from Gore for being great company and making the effort to come along. Thanks too for finding some of the test kit new homes in the wardrobes of OM members. Thanks too to Simon Kirwan for taking some neat pictures with his new digital camera. You can see and download them for free using this link to his site the Lightbox and for Andy Wallace for a route that was new to me at least. It went so well that we're looking at a replay, possibly in Scotland this winter.

For more information on Gore, see their UK web site.